With
the Pompadour with Boucher, Chardin and Fragonard, Watteau
defined an era. Yet when Watteau dies at age 37 in 1721, Boucher has
only 18 Fragonard is not born, it takes twelve years, and this year
even the Pompadour was born. And Watteau, which symbolizes the emotions
of youth in the age of Enlightenment, he lived his short life under the
rigid reign of Louis XIV. He has followed that of six years in the
grave. The king, who ended his reign in weariness and Watteau, bringing
new time, witnessed the same events. Watteau was also the courtisan of
Louis XIV. In 1702, while
Watteau just try success in Paris, new classes have emerged, from
the dress or high finance. Girls of this rich bourgeoisie entered by
their marriage in the aristocracy. A real osmosis is established
between these social categories and Parisian salons where women like
Marquise du Deffand receive the intellectual elite of Europe. They
appreciate small decorative paints for garnish trim salons and
boudoirs. This is the painting associated with "time of recklessness"
that Jacquemart-André Museum devotes its exhibition on the theme
of the fete galante, made fashionable by Watteau but already outdated
at the end of the career of Fragonard. With
the death of Louis XIV, the cultural light of France will move from
Versailles to Paris. The new intelligentsia will take Antoine Watteau
under their protection. It first passes through the workshop Gillot he
became a student and help. The teacher introduced him to the Italian
theater and biting wit. No teaching could be more hostile to the art of
Grand Siècle. Watteau found Pants, Harlequin and Isabelle in his
second master, Claude Audran III. By him, he will apply his talent to
new accreditation and privacy where the paint no longer deploys the
adventures of heroes and gods decor, but spawns the amorous subjects.Conversations
in a landscape, the ladies toilet, who try repeatedly brush Watteau,
and even more, that of his successors, when needed. This tradition
themes lovers back to the thirteenth century and the discovery of
courtly love. Prefiguring the world of Watteau occurs in effect in
Honoré d'Urfé, whose lovers dream only to escape everyday
life and join the enchanted island Cythera Watteau baptize.In
his drawings, even more than in his paintings, the master prefers
a sharp line, griffonis nervous, rapid windings. A baroque inspiration.
And Watteau is it reflects the determination of the eighteenth century
emerging renew its sources. His vision has exercised such influence
over his successors that from 1720, Quillard and Lancret will capture
his subjects. We find the theme if Italian comedia in The
Pleasures of the ball, and then in The Pilgrimage to Cythera, work that
allowed Watteau joining the Academy in 1717 in a style created
especially for him, that of the fête galante. The world of
Watteau was born. François
Boucher, who admired Watteau, engraved with fervor many of his
drawings. But the comparison stops there. In the case of Boucher, more
than gallant festivals, it is pastoral, a genre which he is the
creator. The protagonists of these scenes are usually brought to the
loving couple where the woman is no longer the elegant Parisienne
Watteau but a shepherdess costume, where costumes are not rich fabrics
but gallant party hardy clothing Boucher
was the favorite painter of the Marquise de Pompadour. She had been
brought to Paris in the movement of new ideas in art as in philosophy.
It will bring air from the capital to the king and the court of
Versailles. She really the idea of ​​a "century of Louis XV" and turn
to the glory of the reign activity of the greatest artists of the time.
More importantly, it will play a key role in the evolution of style
that will mark the middle of the century. The friendly and fanciful
rock taste, first mark the triumph of imagination over reason. But it
is in the name of reason, in 1750, to draw a violent reaction that
impose on the arts "return to antiquity." Fragonard will pay the price.He
was trained in the workshop of Boucher, who turned an essential
intermediary between him and Watteau. From 1767 he abandoned history
painting to devote himself to private commissions often dealing with
love issues, which are the interpretation of the theme of Fragonard
fête galante. His exceptional sense of fantasy and illusion
ensures customer of the Court and Madame Du Barry, who succeeded Madame
de Pompadour as patron of arts him. In 1770, she Fragonard four control
panels to decorate the pavilion of Louveciennes themed Progress of
love. They mark the top of the painter's career, but an art show that
appears already passed the name back to antiquity. Yet few artists have
openly sought to paint the picture of a personal dream. The
contribution of the theme of the fete galante helped to link art to the
idea of ​​an escape in itself. While for centuries, the painting was
bent translate into images the myths and dogmas of the community, it
became a secret of the soul. To do this, it took until the eighteenth
century, and even more, his encounter with the painting by Watteau.Musée Jacquemart-André, 158, boulevard Haussmann, 75008 Paris, until 21 July 2014.

Lichtenstein
- Centre Pompidou

Lichtenstein
in Paris is the most beautiful symbol of America. A fabulous
artist. His sudden death, at age 73, in 1997, crowned him as a myth for
ever. A new flag raised high, shamelessly, for the New World. An
innovative wind born after the war and vice versa strongholds of art
posted on each side of the Atlantic. A disruption of the painting dug
into popular culture, but also in the history of the most museum art,
from Delacroix to Cezanne. A sense of immediate communication with the
image, as shown Whaam!, His most famous painting, transforming the war
in 1963 BD for large (bought in 1966 by the Tate Modern in London).
Sizes XXL and devour their dotted frame and primary colors, however
large picture rails as New York lofts. France is the final step in this
long journey pop started brilliantly at the Art Institute of Chicago
(visual shock in the hall of honor), split over two floors at the
National Gallery in Washington, and then deployed in large cubes design
the Tate Modern in London. In the spring, fans of pop art crossed the
English Channel without waiting to see this retrospective. The
luxurious sequence of icons and the profusion series "larger than life"
left them dazzled, perhaps filled. How the Centre Pompidou was he
challenged to do as well, if not better? True to France, Beaubourg left
its biggest space Hantaï Simon (1922-2008), our unsung New
York Hungarians. This painter folding Yet the exact contemporary of
Lichtenstein, born in 1923 in Manhattan. Only a third of the tables of
London came to Paris. And yet, what exhibition! The constraint is the
artist, Picasso said. It also makes the curator, and Camille Morineau
already very inspired for the "Panorama" by Gerhard Richter, a year
ago, turns this lack more. By focusing on pieces often disdained his
art, sculpture and printmaking, the teacher becomes the journey of a
life bubble 100% creative. In a hundred works that respond in a real
formal tennis, it invites the visitor in the same workshop of Roy
Lichtenstein. In the spirit of this thin, ironic and reserved man that
magnifies the "American way of life" in extreme close-ups, types of
understatements in pictures. His studio, real, Roy has painted, and
three huge sizes of its series of Artist's Studios are there to
establish his mental decor, its own tables and references to Matisse's
Dance in 1909 which embodies background the eternity of the painting,
fruit (lemons well), its green plant with her pitcher. The set design
is both simple as child's play (Magenta maze of blue alcoves where
marry sculptures, paintings, enamel on steel and sketches on paper) and
as a sophisticated art historian who has read everything (what I create
is of the form, a great little book of interviews with the artist often
unpublished). The coupling of both chronological and thematic raises
many alpha a very long artist, hatched with pop art life, and the
aggressiveness of the commercial art and beyond the age of icons
quickly ( Drowning Girl, 1963, MoMA loan, or Step-On Can with Leg 1961
star auction and ready for the Louis Vuitton Foundation). Manufactured
objects painted black and white replay of the Cathedrals by Monet,
Picasso Bathers of the ink landscapes of ancient China, there is this
constant search for the form of experimentation, the material to
explore as the first day. The more confined space of the Centre
Pompidou forced to move closer to work. Their humanity and science pop
you in the face."Roy
Lichtenstein" until November 4 at the Centre Pompidou

DALI
- Centre Pompidou

The
National Centre for Art and Culture Georges Pompidou has until 25 March
2013, one of the creators of the most complex and prolific twentieth
century. Salvador Dalí (1904-1989) is both one of the
predominant figure in the history of modern art and one of the most
popular. It is also one of the most controversial artists, often
criticized for his bizarre attitude, his love of money and provocative
political stance. More than thirty years after the institution
retrospective dedicated to him in 1979-1980, this exhibition remains to
this day the most successful attendance in its history. It illuminates
the character of Dalí through an exceptional choice of major
works. New attendance record in 2012 for the National Centre for Art
and Culture Georges Pompidou. Attendance at the Centre Pompidou in 2012
exceeded the record level set in 2011 and 3.8 million visits to the
museum and exhibitions, up 5.5% compared to the previous year. This
growth attests to the exceptional success of the program of temporary
exhibitions, as evidenced in 2012 several exhibitions that have been
and are still the event: after Matisse, Pairs and sets (495,000
visitors) and Gerhard Richter, Panorama (425,000 visitors) The public's
enthusiasm was confirmed at the end of the year by welcoming it
reserves the Dalí exhibition that draws from its opening on
21
November, some 6,700 visitors per day. More than two hundred works
(paintings, sculptures, drawings ...) are presented in a course
designed by chrono-thematic sections: the dialogue between the eye and
the brain of the artist and the viewer: Dalí, pioneer
performance, author of ephemera, media manipulator considering art as a
fact of global communication. Among the masterpieces exposed, you can
admire some great Icon - The Persistence of Memory (Soft Watches),
1931, The Great Masturbator, 1929 The specter of sex appeal, 1934 or
The Endless Enigma, 1938 - and discover a hundred works on paper,
objects, projects for the theater or cinema, films, photographs and
excerpts from TV shows. The visitor of the exhibition began its entry
into the world of the artist through an airlock ovoid evoking the
intrauterine life, a symbol of birth and origin. He graduated with a
labyrinthine hall showing the brain of the artist. Around the
exhibition this international conference will be held over two days,
will bring together contributions from leading experts in
Dalí's
work, crossed through the eyes of contemporary artists.This public
institution established by the governments of Catalonia and the
Balearic Islands in 2002, aims to promote the Catalan language and
culture through the internationalization of its creators, the diffusion
of artistic and cultural exchanges, and support for language studies
and Catalan culture in the academic field.

Bohêmes - Grand Palais

This
exhibition about la Boheme, modern myth, is hold at Grand Palais from
26 September 2012 to 14 January 2013. The fact that it is organized by
NMR - Grand Palace and the fundación Mapfre, Madrid is more
attractive and promising. If Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Modigliani
and Picasso are of course invited, Especially as the Bohemian reminds
each of us so much, and sometimes so different ... Artists, exoticism,
music, as countries where the man would still be a wolf to man and hide
for days in his dreams! And the blurb, which we take here so long
excerpts, is written so so sensitive! It is true that the "Bohemian" is
firmly entrenched in our imagination. In many ways and forms very
diverse. It is as much a part of us as our great modern myths. It was
sung, filmed, verse, exalted, declared dead a hundred times, and
percent once adjusted. The idea of ​​Bohemia appeared in the middle of
the nineteenth century in the company of Romanticism and Realism. It
marked the transformation of the status of the artist, who left the
protection of the prince to become "solitary genius, miserable and
misunderstood that anticipates the convulsions of society." Poets
(Nerval, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine ...), painters or musicians
(Courbet, Van Gogh, Satie, Modigliani, Picasso ...), many great heralds
of modernity that gave a face to one facets of this tumultuous concept.Rebels
all conventions,
drummers paved cow eating rabid fans of women and drinks they have, for
generations of apprentice artists, turned the dream of redemptive glory
that is gained at the risk from oblivion and death. The literature and
the press, theater and opera, La Boheme has quickly gained immense
popularity and has entered the collective imagination and forever
linked the image of Paris in the Latin Quarter, Montmartre, then
Montparnasse. Last twenty years of work on external fields as the
history of marginality, migration, nomads, renewed analysis of this
phenomenon. The myth of Bohemia is now part of history, much richer and
more complex, the report of the European peoples to the gypsy nation.
Egyptian called the classical period, and then appointed the most
diverse names - Gypsy Manouche bigot - the Bohemian became shortly
after its appearance in the West in the fifteenth century, a hero of
the novel (Cervantes at first) and favorite subject for artists (Calot,
Vouet, Georges de la Tour). The mystery of its origins, long
incomprehensible language, his intimate relationship with nature, his
ability to tell the future, are a legend. His sudden appearances and
disappearances feed the fantasy of a life without ties, without rules,
intense and sensual. The artist, fascinated, found him in his master
free. Gypsies and bohemians have therefore a related party. Figures of
liberty, of wandering, they share marginality and misery. Elusive,
clever, insider secrets to inaccessible, permanently reduced to the
standard, they disturb, provoke and delight our sedentary society. This
is of course the term gypsy who come from the pen of the first
descriptors bohemian life emerging. And under the Nazi regime, artists
and gypsies will be combined in the same detestation. By being in a new
relationship as well as on the intersections between disciplines
(painting, literature, photography, music), based on more than 180
works and unpublished discoveries combining outstanding loans (The
Fortune Teller, Georges de la Tour , Metropolitan Museum New York,
L'Absinthe, Edgar Degas, Musee d'Orsay, Paris, in Montmartre area,
Vincent van Gogh, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam, La Gitane Van Dongen,
MNAM, Paris ...), this exhibition aims to bring a new light on this
common history. The scenography is Robert Carsen. The visitor crosses
the centuries and will cross the most picturesque representations of
people wandering. Then penetrate the world of the painter, his garret,
his studio, his shelter, to complete his race in the cafes of
Montmartre. When, out of the tavern he resumed his way, he will quickly
sobered by the inauguration of the exhibition hall Gypsy has
degenerated Art in Munich 1937 ... Through a journey of four centuries
and fifteen themes, a phenomenon that sheds light bohemian, Leonard da
Vinci Picasso, throughout the history of art and societies, and still
resonates in our contemporary world. As Puccini's opera, this
exhibition is a large popular rendezvous, mixing fantasy and severity,
entertainment and melancholy, misery and glory.

Bohemians at the Grand
Palais from 26 September 2012 to 14 January 2013